Prosodic Realization Of Focus Research Articles

Musicality and Age Interaction in Tone Development.

Vocal pitch, which involves not only F0 but also multiple covarying acoustic cues is central to linguistic perception and production at various levels of prosodic structure. Recent studies on language development have shown that differences in learners' musicality affect the F0 cue development in perception of sentence-level intonation or in prosodic realization of focus. This study aims to contribute toward a fuller understanding of the effect of musicality on linguistic pitch development via a close investigation of the relationship between musicality, age, and lexical tone production covering both F0 and spectral cues in children. Forty-three native Mandarin-speaking children between the ages of 4 and 6 years are recruited to participate in both a semi-spontaneous tone production task and a musicality test. For each age (4, 5, and 6 years) and musicality (below or above the median score of each age group) group, the contrastivity of the four tones is evaluated by performing automatic tone classification using three sets of acoustic cues (F0, spectral cues, and both). It has been found that higher musicality is associated with higher contrastivity of the tones produced at the age of 4 and 5 years, but not at the age of 6 years. These results suggest that musicality promotes earlier development of tone production only in earlier stages of prosodic development; by the age of 6 years, the musicality advantage in tone production subsides.

Pitch Accent Distribution and Focus Structure in Taifi Arabic: A Production Study

Prosodic encoding of focus in Taifi Arabic is not yet fully understood. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical sentences with information focus, contrastive focus and without focus. This paper presents results from a production experiment investigating whether information and contrastive focus have prosodic effects on the pitch-accent distributions. Using question-answer paradigms, 16 native speakers of Taifi Arabic were asked to read three target sentences in different focus conditions. Results reveal that every content word is pitch-accented in utterances with and without focus. However, there are very few cases (23.12%) in which the post-focus words are deaccented. The largest percentage of deaccentuation was observed in the utterances with initial contrastive focus. The results show that focus structures in Taifi Arabic show both deaccentuation and post-focus compression. Therefore, the prosodic realization of focus in Taifi Arabic is different from their counterparts in other Arabic dialects such as Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic. These findings have an important implication for both the prosodic typology and focus typology.

Focus projection need not be based on pitch accents: evidence from Georgian

Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that the prosodic realization of focus in Georgian is consistent with focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on a larger constituent – and can be accounted for with a Default Prosody-style analysis. In focus projection in English, object-focus utterances are realized in the same way as VP- or broad-focus utterances, because in all three cases the object carries the nuclear pitch accent. In contrast, in subject-focus utterances, the subject carries the nuclear pitch accent, which is incompatible with broad- or VP-focus interpretation; focus projection does not arise. Unlike English, Georgian, a ‘phrase language’, relies not on pitch accents but on boundary tones and phrasing in focus marking (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). This language type has not been explicitly addressed from the perspective of focus projection. Nevertheless, the results reported here demonstrate that the prosodic realization of subject- and object-focus in Georgian, expressed with boundary tones and duration of the stressed syllable, fits with the focus-projection pattern. This paper shows that the Georgian data can be accounted for with the Default Prosody approaches to focus projection, but not approaches employing the formal mechanism of F-projection. Accordingly, the Georgian facts provide a novel argument in favor of the Default Prosody approaches.

Prosodic Realization of Focus in Bilingual Production of Southern Min and Mandarin

Previously post-focus compression (PFC) - the lowering of fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity of post-focal words to below those of the same words in identical sentences with neutral focus - was found in Beijing Mandarin but not in Taiwan Southern Min and Taiwan Mandarin. This study investigated whether the presence of PFC would vary with age and language use of societal bilinguals of Southern Min and Mandarin. Three groups of bilingual speakers of Quanzhou Southern Min and Mandarin, age around 20, 40 and 60, were examined for their prosodic realization of focus. All the speakers acquired Southern Min first, followed by Mandarin in childhood, but the younger speakers used more Mandarin than the older speakers. Comparisons of duration, intensity and F0 in focused, prefocus and post-focus words indicated that all groups produced Taiwan-like focus, i.e., without PFC, in Southern Min, but the youngest group produced Beijing-like PFC in Mandarin. These findings reveal that increased language experience, such as greater amount of second language (L2) use, correlates with increased ability to produce native-like PFC in L2, suggesting that PFC can be used as an indicator in assessing L2 speech acquisition.

Prosodic realization of focus in American English by Beijing Mandarin learners

In addition to an increase of duration, F0 and intensity in phonetically realizing focus, post-focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity has been found in many languages, including American English and Beijing Mandarin. Recent studies found that PFC did not easily transfer from language to language (Wu and Chung, 2011); however, language experience impacted the realization of PFC (Chen et al., 2012). The effect of length of residence (LOR) in an L2-speaking environment on L2 pronunciation accuracy remains controversial (Piske, 2007). The current study examined English focus production of Beijing Mandarin learners, who were college freshmen, residing in the United States for 3 to 6 months, and college seniors for 3.5 to 4 years. Compared to the control group, both learner groups produced comparable patterns of duration change; the freshman group did not present significant PFC of F0 and intensity in either initial-focus or medial-focus condition; the senior group presented a native-like PFC in the initial-focus condition and an intermediate pattern of PFC among the three groups in the medial-focus condition. The preliminary results indicate that Beijing Mandarin learners with long LOR in the US produced more native-like prosodic focus in English than those with short LOR in the United States.

Prosodic realization of focus in Mandarin by advanced American learners of Chinese

Prosodic focus in Beijing Mandarin and American English involves language-specific patterns of expansion in duration, F0 and intensity on the focused item as well as post-focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity (Xu, 1999; Xu & Xu, 2005). The current study examined whether advanced American learners of Mandarin realize prosodic focus and PFC in the same way as native speakers. Ten native Beijing Mandarin speakers and ten non-Chinese American learners of Mandarin produced stimuli with four Mandarin tone types on focused constituents, and Tone 1 in pre-focus and post-focus constituents. Preliminary results indicated that the learners produced focus-related duration changes in a manner similar to native Mandarin speakers. However, learners did not show native-like patterns of in-focus changes in intensity on Tone 2, mean F0 on Tone 1, and F0 excursion on Tone 4. Furthermore, learners showed no PFC of F0 or intensity, consistent with the idea that PFC is not easily transferred from L1 to L2 (Wu & Chung, 2011). Future work will investigate prosodic focus in the Mandarin of Chinese-heritage American learners. The goal is to investigate whether earlier exposure to the language (via heritage) affects learners' ability to realize prosodic focus in a native-like manner.

Effects of language experience on prosodic realization of focus in Southern Min‐Mandarin bilinguals.

The production of prosodic focus in Quanzhou Southern Min and Mandarin was examined in three groups of bilinguals: older (mean age 57.6), mid‐age (mean age 39.8), and younger (mean age 19.9). All groups learned Southern Min first, followed by Mandarin in childhood, but the groups varied in relative language use: the younger the group, the more the Mandarin use. Chen et al. [InterSpeech (2009)] reported Beijing Mandarin has post‐focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity, whereas Taiwanese (Taiwan Southern Min) and Taiwan Mandarin do not. Thus, Quanzhou bilinguals were expected not to exhibit PFC in Southern Min but may in their Mandarin production. Language experience is predicted to impact the production of PFC in the bilinguals. Specifically, bilinguals with more Mandarin use may show more PFC. The relative use of duration, intensity, and F0 in focused and pre‐focus words may also vary by the language spoken (Mandarin versus Southern Min) and the relative use of the two languages. Preliminary results with the younger group indicate Beijing‐like production for Mandarin and Taiwanese‐like production for Quanzhou Southern Min. Results of the other groups will be presented as well.